A few bold caps drawn by Albert Du Bois for the 1906 Henderson Sign Painter book started me in the direction of looking at how sign painters approached slabs after the industrial revolution. The usual happened from there. My exercise in the early lettering roots of what eventually became the definition of geometric typography ended up having a life of its own. The majuscules led to minuscules, one idiosyncratic bold weight led to six more, and uprights led to italics. What was kind-of-interesting in the early twentieth century persuaded me to make it interesting enough a century later. This of course meant alternates, swashes, the standard baggage that keeps calling my name.
Henderson Slab is a family of seven weights plus italics, all full of open features and extended Latin language support. Part of this family’s appeal is its coverage of nearly the entire of the slab serif through the last 100 years — the basis is the manual, humanist origins, the swashed forms come right out of the phototypesetting era, and the alternates and mostly modern constructs of contemporary ideas. The result is a set with the ability to function in modern spaces, from corporate to editorial, in text or display, while both winking and nodding at the roots of what is now considered a geometric endeavor.